


Definitely Not Prince Charming

by Avianbabble



Category: TiMER (2009)
Genre: F/F, Just me playing in the world, there weren't enough lesbians in the movie, there's a little bit of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:41:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8621350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avianbabble/pseuds/Avianbabble
Summary: Amanda has waited her whole adolescent life to meet the man of her dreams. Boy, is she in for a surprise!





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever work on this site or any. So, please comment and let me know how it went. But also be gentle!

2654 days, 13 hours, 39 minutes, 14 seconds  
Those were the exact numbers that appeared on the small strip on Amanda’s wrist as it blinked to life and the stinging pain started to fade. Amanda had hardly noticed the sharp pinch of the applicator, or even the uncomfortable tightness with which her mom was holding her other hand. Her mind was already racing, doing the math as fast as she could.   
2654 days, a little more than 7 years until she met her soulmate.   
Her mother squealed in delight. “Oh, honey! This is so perfect! I can’t wait to tell your father!” Amanda couldn’t help but share her mother’s infectious enthusiasm. She had dreamed of this day every since the day it occurred to her to ask what the little gray strips on her parents wrists were. Their own timers were blank; they’d zeroed out years before her birth. It was Amanda’s favorite story, and her mother told it in the same words every time she asked.  
“It was like a fairy tale!’ Her mom always began. “I went to the same coffee shop I went to every morning before class. You’re supposed to go about your day normally, but God knows how I did it knowing I had half an hour until I met him! Of course the line was horrendous on a Tuesday morning, but I waited through it, my heart racing the whole time, wondering if it was anyone in the room. I finally got my order and I walking out the door, counting the seconds, when someone opened the door from outside. I looked up and there was your father, wearing a brand new suit to impress me. Both of our timers went off the moment our eyes met, but I would have known without them. It was love at first sight, I knew he was perfect for me me in every way! You will too when it’s your turn!” As a small child, Amanda had begged for days for her parents to get her a timer early, but it was no use. The youngest someone could get a timer was 13 since they only worked after the onset of puberty. Now, two days after her 13th birthday, Amanda finally had a timer of her own, a soulmate of her own.  
2654 days, 13 hours, 35 minutes, 48 seconds.  
She couldn't wait to meet him and live happily ever after, just like a fairy-tale.

 

2654 days, 8 hours, 12 minutes, 37 seconds later…

 

Beep! Beep! Beep!  
Amanda leaned across her bed to turn off her alarm and slid out from under her covers, her yawn stifled by a grimace as her bed warmed feet came in contact with the cool wood floors of her neat apartment. She stumbled to the bathroom across the hall and scowled in the mirror at the dark circles under her grey eyes and the vaguely nest like structure of her shoulder length blonde hair. Of course she hadn’t slept well. How could she?  
She glanced down at the little grey strip on her wrist.  
0 days, 5 hours, 19 minutes, 11 seconds.   
Today was the day.   
Forget her stomach, her entire torso fluttered and a wide grin split her heart shaped face as she hastily stripped out of her pajamas and stepped into the shower.   
She has worn her timer like a badge since the day she got it. She had been one of the few kids in her junior high school who got a timer right after her 13th birthday. Most families preferred to wait until their kids started high school. Amanda had been the envy of many a middle school girl and the occasional boy, and too many sleep overs had been spent speculating about how Amanda would meet her soulmate, what he would look like, how many kids they would have. Once Amanda got to high school, more and more of her peers got timers of their own. Some lucky few met their soulmates early on, in middle or high school. Amanda always felt a small fissure of envy for those people, but was usually able to brush it off. She had always been mostly content with her time. At least she wasn’t one of those unfortunate people who got their timer only to realize that they wouldn’t meet their soulmate for 50 years or something. Some people still dated, but Amanda thought it was an antiquated practice; something people did before the timer. Why would she want to date someone when her soulmate was out there waiting for her?  
She attempted to dress as though it was any other day, but who was she kidding? She wanted to make a good impression. She carefully blow dried her hair and rolled it into a french twist, humming to herself and feeling her stomach bob every time she caught sight of her wrist in the mirror. Would he be tall? Would he wear a suit, like her dad? She smiled at the thought as she pulled on her blue pencil skirt and matching cardigan. Was he as excited to meet her as she was to meet him?  
She sat in her morning classes and barely absorbed a word, instead watching the seconds tick away. Each minute passing seemed simultaneously glacially slow and unbelievably fast. She avoided the knowing looks a few of her classmates sent in her direction. People usually didn't advertise their times, not in college, but anyone could recognize the signs of someone about to zero out. Amanda chastised herself for being so obvious as she pulled the sleeve of her sweater over her wrist and pretended to take detailed notes.   
By the time Amanda made it outside and looked at her timer again, she was shocked to see how much time had passed.   
0 days, 0 hours, 2 minutes, 16 seconds  
This was it. It was right now!  
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest as she looked around the courtyard. He must be here! She spun around, looking carefully around her for the first time. The space was moderately crowded, as per usual on a sunny weekday afternoon. People milled around her, or stopped in clusters to chat. She tried to catch the eye of guys walking by. One of them had be him. She glanced down as her wrist  
0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 4 seconds  
As she spun around, her heel caught on one of the cobble stones...  
3 seconds  
She lost her balance and began to pitch forward…  
2 seconds  
Her arms instinctively reached out for anything to break her fall and caught the sleeve of the stranger standing in front of her. She both heard and felt the fabric rend beneath her fingers.  
1 second  
“What the fuck!” Amanda heard the stranger say as they turned to face her.  
0 seconds  
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!  
The sound of two timers zeroing out rang in Amanda’s ears and her heart swelled as she looked up into the face of her soul mate, her true love, the man…  
Amanda’s mouth dropped open in shock. The woman in front of her had dark cropped hair, buzzed on one side, while the other half of her forehead was obscured by red tipped fringe. Her dark eyes were lined with kohl and the eyebrow that wasn’t hidden by dyed hair was pierced by a black stud. Her full lips, also parted in shock, were painted blood red. Amanda straightened and stepped out of the circle of the woman’s arms. She wore impossibly high heeled black boots, no wonder she was so tall, over purposefully shredded black jeans. A dark band T-Shirt was covered by a denim vest; also artfully ripped and carpeted in a brightly colored array of buttons with statements like “Fuck OFF!”, “Lezzie for Life”, and “FIGHT THE MAN!” stamped across them. The only tear in her clothing that was clearly unintentional was where the short sleeve of her shirt had ripped away from the shoulder seam, revealing inked skin, the same sleeve Amanda’s flailing fingers had caught as she fell.   
Amanda’s eyes dragged back up to the face above hers, the woman was clearly finishing her own perusal, and, as Amanda watched, the corners of that red mouth pulled down into a grimace.  
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Her voice was low for a woman, and rough, like a jazz singer.  
“Excuse me?” Amanda’s voice seemed squeaky in comparison, and the woman’s frown deepend.  
“ I said, ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me!’” She emphasized the profanity.   
“Wait,” Amanda said, her shaped eyebrows pulled down in confusion. “There must be a mistake. I’m supposed to meet my…”  
“Soulmate?” The woman interrupted with a snort. “Heads up, Sweetheart. You found her!” She glanced down at her shoulder. “This is my favorite shirt!”  
Amanda gaped. “No, this isn't possible. I'm not…”  
“Gay?”, the woman interrupted again. She rolled her eyes skyward and ran her hand through her short hair in exasperation. “This has to be some sort of cosmic joke!” She yelled. At this, she turned on her impossibly high heel and stalked away, leaving Amanda dazed and immobile.   
What just happened? Amanda thought. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to meet her perfect man. It was supposed to be love at first sight.  
It wasn’t supposed to be some angry, pierced, tattooed and potentially violent woman.  
Oh, God. A woman. Amanda finally convinced her feet to shuffle her towards the library, where she was due at work in an hour or two. It definitely wasn’t supposed to be a woman. Of course same sex soul mates existed, they were actually pretty common, but the thought had never even crossed Amanda’s mind. She wasn’t even attracted to…   
Come to think of it, she had never spent much time thinking about who she was attracted to. She’d only ever thought about her future with her soul mate, whom she’d always just assumed to be male. What if…?  
No, it wasn’t possible. There had to be a mistake. Even if her One could be a woman, which Amanda found shocking enough, it certainly wouldn’t be that one.   
Amanda spent the first half of her shift shelving, which she certainly didn’t mind. It gave her a chance for some much needed quiet among the semi deserted stacks. The second half of her shift was spent at the front desk and was much less pleasant. There she had to put on a fake smile as she asked bored students for their IDs so they could check out reference books they probably wouldn’t even read, as if her life hadn’t just been turned upside down.   
About an hour before the end of her shift, she was rearranging the pens in the cup on the desk, when a stack of books slammed onto the counter in front of her. She glanced up sharply, prepared to ask whoever it was what those books had ever done to them, and met dark eyes further shadowed under dyed fringe.   
“What are you doing here?” Amanda demanded.  
The woman smirked and gestured toward the books on the counter. “It’s a library, Amanda. What do you think i’m doing?”  
“How do you know my name?”  
The woman raised her pierced eyebrow and flicked her eyes down to Amanda’s chest. Blushing fiercely, and cursing herself for it, Amanda glanced down at the shiny name tag pinned to her shirt.  
“Listen, Goldilocks.” She chuckled, “I think we may have started off on the wrong…”  
“No, you listen,” Amanda interrupted. “There has clearly been some sort of misunderstanding. This,” she motioned between them, “is clearly impossible. So I would appreciate if you would just leave me alone, and definitely not harass me at my workplace.”  
The woman’s eyes grew steadily wider as Amanda spoke. When she was done, Amanda watched as the woman dropped her gaze to her feet, pursing her lips and nodding, before flashing Amanda one last indecipherable smirk and leaving. Amanda unclenched her hands from the edge of the desk, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the slight tremor in her fingers, and went to move the stack of books the woman had left. Then she noticed the slip of paper folded between the pages of one of the books. She slid it out and unfolded it. Scrawled across the piece of paper in blocky handwriting was a phone number and a name. Holly…   
“Tough day?” Amanda jumped at the voice of Jim, her co-worker, and hastily shoved the slip of paper into the pocket of her skirt.  
“You could say that,” she replied, busying herself with straightening her name tag.  
“Yeah? Well, me and a couple other people from the library are gonna head to a friends party. Wanna join us?”  
It wasn’t the first time he’d asked asked her to do something like this, and she opened her mouth to say that she couldn’t, like she always did. Then, she wondered, why had she never taken Jim up on his offer? She’d spent so long thinking her life would begin when she met her soulmate, she’d essentially forgotten to live her own life in the interim. Now, it had happened, and it wasn’t a fairy tale, and she was 20 years old and had never been to a real party.   
She steeled her resolve. “You know what, Jim? I’d love to.”

 

Everything was too loud, too hot, and too bright as Amanda stumbled to the front door of the house, assisted by Sally, another co-worker, who had taken pity on her sitting in the corner with her fingers in her ears. She had felt out of place the moment she stepped into the house party. She’d recognized a few faces among the throng of people, but no one she felt comfortable actually going up to talk to. She got a beer from the kitchen and nursed it, hoping it would make her brave enough to actually talk to someone, and was shocked at how quickly the alcohol started to buzz in her veins. She realized, too late, that she hadn’t really eaten since that morning; too preoccupied with the anticipation, and then disappointment, of meeting her One. It was then that Jim bounced up to her.  
“Having fun?” His voice was raised to be heard over the thumping of the music.   
“Should I be?”  
“You just need to relax or once in your pretty little life,” he said. “You should try this.” He held up a long tubular device that Amanda recognized was for smoking marijuana, but she’d never seen one in person before. She immediately began to shake her head, but stopped herself. Who was it telling her she couldn’t?   
“Okay,” she’d said, pleased at Jim’s shocked expression.   
Amanda had coughed for a solid 5 minutes after inhaling the acrid smoke, convinced that her lungs and throat were on fire. A couple of people around her laughed, which Amanda did not appreciate, but someone also brought her a glass of water, which she did. She’d wandered off to a nearby chair to sip her water, deciding that she still wasn’t having fun. Then, things got really weird.   
Amanda could hardly describe what she was feeling; her thoughts were circuitous and she couldn’t focus on any one thing. At first, she felt really sleepy, almost dream-like. Someone, Sally, had stepped into her vision and seemed to be asking her how she was feeling, but Amanda couldn’t hear the words. Everything seemed muffled. Then, it was like someone had clapped inside her brain, or flipped a switch because everything was suddenly loud and bright and hyper-focused. Suddenly, Sally’s face was clear in front of her.   
“Are you okay?” Sally’s voice grated against Amanda’s ears. She flinched and gestured vaguely towards her head. Somehow trying to non-verbally articulate some of what she was feeling, which, in a nutshell, was very overwhelmed. Sally seemed to understand, as Amanda felt Sally helping her to her feet, saying something about “Let’s get you some air”.   
“Alright,” Sally settled Amanda into to front steps, encouraging her to take deep breaths. “Do you have someone to call while I get you another glass of water?”  
Amanda wracked her brain as she fumbled in her skirt pocket for her phone. She found it, as well as the slip of paper with Holly’s number on it. She laughed and turned to show Sally. She was gone, presumably to get water, but Amanda had no sense of how long she had been gone, no memory of her leaving. Before she could think about it much more, she started punching the numbers into her phone. It rang twice.  
“Hello?” Holly’s rough voice answered.  
“Ayyyy!” Amanda keened into the phone speaker, her greeting dissolving into uncontrollable giggles.  
“Amanda? What’s going on?” Holly sounded shocked, and concerned, but mostly shocked.  
“Too much pot, baby!” Amanda sing-songed.  
“Oh my God, where are you?” Holly’s tone was clearly an attempt at exasperation, but landed somewhere closer to worried. “Look around for the address, I’m coming to get you.” Somehow, Amanda managed to find the cross streets and the numbers above the door and parrot them into the phone speaker.  
“Alright, I’m on my way. Do not move an inch until I get there”  
An indeterminable amount of time passed, in which Sally must have come back, because Amanda suddenly had a new glass of water. Then, Holly was there, helping Amanda to her feet with an arm around her waist, and steering her towards a dark blue Chevy. The drive was uncomfortably silent, and Amanda couldn’t help but doze in the passenger seat. She was startled awake by a none too gentle poke in her ribs.  
“Hey, wake up! I can’t carry you up the stairs.” Amanda wiped her mouth and slipped out of the car, taking Holly’s offered hand to steady herself as she stood. She looked up to an unfamiliar structure.  
‘I don't live here,” she exclaimed.  
“No duh, dumb ass. I live here,” Holly explained, this time sincerely exasperated. “I asked you where you lived, but you were too conked out to tell me. So, here we are.”  
“You can’t call me a dumb ass,” Amanda pouted as they climbed the stairs to the front door.  
“I can when you act like one!” Holly pushed the door open. “You should never, ever drink or smoke or do anything at all with people you don’t trust. They didn’t teach you that in princess land?”  
Holly helped Amanda to a couch and stalked around a corner into a what must have been a kitchen, based on the clanging and rummaging sounds that were emanating from the doorway. When one put it that way, Amanda’s actions did seem very unsmart. Holly emerged from the kitchen, dropping a box of Cheez-Its onto Amanda’s lap and placing yet another glass of water on the coffee table in front of her, before settling on the chair opposite the couch.  
“Eat those, drink this. You’ll feel better”  
Amanda peered at the box of Cheez-Its. They were most certainly not gluten free, but she knew she needed to eat and popped one in her mouth, then a handful, then another. They were delicious, and Holly was right; they made her feel better.  
For a few minutes, the only sounds were Amanda crunching away at the crackers.  
“So, soulmates,” she piped up suddenly.  
Holly choked on a laugh. “Says the woman who, not 12 hours ago called this,” she motioned between their timers “a mistake.”  
“Hey,” Amanda protested, “You freaked out first! Remember?”  
“Yeah, I did. You weren’t what I was expecting!”  
“What you were expecting? Excuse me! You’re not exactly what I was...”  
Holly interrupted, “If you’d let me finish at the library you would’ve known that I came to apologize for judging you before I knew you. If I know one thing,” She held up her timered wrist, “I know that these things are never wrong. Like it or not, it’s you and me now, for life. If you don’t mind, I want to give liking it a shot.”  
Amanda sat in stunned silence, until…  
“Okay.”   
Holly’s gaze shot from her lap to Amanda,“Okay?”  
“Yes, okay. Let’s do this. Let’s give it a shot.”  
It was Holly’s turn to be stunned, “Okay,” she said softly.  
After a few quiet moments, Amanda held the cracker box out to Holly.  
“Cheez-It?”  
They both burst into laughter.

 

23 days, 8 hours, 18 minutes, 7 seconds later…

 

Holly wasn’t Prince Charming, but she was charming. Amanda was charmed by her sardonic sense of humor, the way her dark eyes sparkled when she laughed. Holly had tried to teach Amanda how to line her eyes like she did, with hilariously disastrous, and semi raccoon-ish results. Even her pierced eyebrow and tattooed arms, which had seemed so frightening before, were just another part of Holly, and Holly was beautiful.   
They were walking back to Amanda’s apartment from the store, they needed more Cheez-Its for the Harry Potter Marathon, when Holly caught Amanda’s hand in hers and intertwined their fingers for the first time. Amanda grinned in the direction of the pavement, but glanced up to catch a similar expression on Holly’s face as she squeezed her fingers. They turned the corner onto Amanda’s street when…  
“Amanda?”  
“Mom?” Amanda’s mother was standing next to her apartment. She felt her stomach drop. Oh, no. She’d forgotten to tell her.  
“What are you doing here?” she asked, trying not to sound nervous as she separated her hand from Holly’s in order to hug her mother.  
“You didn't think I’d forget, would you? I thought I’d give you two was bit of time to adjust, but then you couldn’t keep me away! I want to meet the person my daughter is going to grow old with!”   
“Well, about that, Mom. Umm…”  
Much to Amanda’s dismay, Holly held her hand out to Amanda’s mother, “It’s nice to meet you, Ma’am.”  
“Oh, hello, dear. It’s nice to meet you. Are you one of Amanda’s friends? So, Amanda. Where is he? When do I get to meet my future son-in….”  
Amanda watched sudden understanding and then hurt bloom across Holly’s expressive face. Her eyes avoided Amanda’s as she turned to walk away.  
“Wait!” Amanda said it to both her mother and to Holly. Holly stopped in her tracks, and her mother stopped mid speech.   
“Mom?” Amanda grasped Holly’s hand and pulled her closer to her side, “I want you to meet Holly. My soul mate.”


End file.
